Theater review: 'Fiction' is as engaging as it is mysterious

Tuesday

Mar 31, 2009 at 4:06 PM

Steven Dietz's play "Fiction" asks the eternal question, Would you want your spouse to read your private diaries after you died?

By John Staton, Staff Writer

Steven Dietz's play "Fiction" asks the eternal question, Would you want your spouse to read your private diaries after you died?Or, more pointedly, How about while you're still alive?It's an intriguing, nervous-making proposition, one that's often played to the hilt by a game cast in a production by Opera House Theatre Company. Directed with a forward-tumbling efficiency by Dan Morris, "Fiction," running in Thalian Hall's studio theater, is an occasionally puzzling piece but one that's always thought-provoking.At first, "Fiction" presents itself as a kind of rueful look at the difficulties of marriage (and it is that, among other things) with Michael (Mike O'Neil) and Linda (Rachel Lewis) carrying on an extended argument/conversation about who gave the best rock 'n' roll vocal performance of all time. (He says John Lennon in "Twist and Shout." She's down with Janis Joplin's "Piece of My Heart.") It's hard to tell whether they're good-natured adversaries or embittered enemies, but as things continue that's not the only thing that will become unclear.Early on, it's revealed that Linda has a brain tumor and has just a few weeks to live, upon which the crux of the show is revealed. Both Michael and Linda are professional writers, and after she passes she wants him to read her personal diaries. ("You've never read them," Linda says. "That I know of.") The kicker, though, is that before she dies, Linda wants to read Michael's diaries.Suffice it to say that inconvenient secrets are revealed that will shake the foundations of Linda and Michael's marriage while raising deep questions (in the audience's mind, at least) about both of them as writers.The challenges of being married are one part of the play. Many couples will recognize themselves when Michael, recalling a pointed, unwanted question he asked his wife, interprets her resulting look as asking him, "Do you really want to wade into the maelstrom here, honey?" But much of it is devoted to the business of writing (popular fiction vs. serious literature) and to the many neuroses of writers. O'Neil has one great sequence where Michael, on his way to a writers' colony, talks about how much he enjoys packing for the colony, the plane ride to the colony, telling people he's going to the colony. But when he actually gets alone to write, well, writers love to talk about how much they need their solitude, "But for God's sake, don't go and give it to us!" Michael complains in despair.At the colony Michael meets Abby (Annya Broderick), who helps the run the writers' retreat and who also knows Linda. It turns out that Abby holds the key to this play, which is, at its heart, a kind of highly literate mystery. In some ways the set-up is better than the payoff, and while the whole thing sometimes feels more like a literary exercise than like something that would actually happen, if the play is not entirely satisfying it's certainly engaging. The running time comes in at two hours, but it feels about a half hour shorter.The acting, for the most part, is top-notch. O'Neil is fun to watch as Michael, and he delivers a likable and sensitive performance, despite his character's forays into overly aggressive snobbery. And Lewis, while not really showing any physical signs of a debilitating illness, certainly strikes the right emotional tone, that of a woman who feels everything slipping away but is nonetheless determined to hold on to her dignity. Both Lewis and O'Neil turn in nuanced portrayals of real, flawed people, performances that are at occasional odds with the eyebrow-raising turns the script takes.Broderick's performance as Abby is a little harder to pin down. She's competent enough that she doesn't detract from the proceedings, but there's a flatness there so that it doesn't feel like she's adding much, either. There are a lot of questions about Abby I can't address here without giving a bunch of stuff away, but Broderick never really makes Abby as intriguing as she should be.Ultimately, the script's lack of explicitness - it certainly doesn't hit us over the head with anything, but at times it flirts with being too understated for its own good - will make it frustrating for some while providing hours of pondering and discussion for others. In that sense, this "Fiction" is open to interpretation.John Staton: 343-2343john.staton@starnewsonline.com

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